John Cowan wrote:

>Michael Everson scripsit:
>
>
>
>>This is very interesting. I have noticed that one Wikipedia
>>contributor insists that Canadian Syllabics are an abugida because
>>"rotation" is like a diacritic; or rather, because the base forms are
>>present in all of the vowel positions. I don't think this is
>>particularly convincing, myself.
>>
>>
>
>>From my viewpoint as an anti-essentialist (see
>http://www.ccil.org/~cowan/essentialist.html , which is by no means
>merely a joke), I don't think the question "Is X an abiguda?" very
>interesting, or even well-defined. For me, the question is "Is it
>worthwhile considering X as an abugida for purpose Y?"
>
>
>

As I said before, in similar circumstances, since classification is at
root arbitrary (see Watanabe's "Ugly Duckling" theorem), it's a matter
of deciding what classification is most useful or informative or
enlightening for the circumstances or discussion at hand. Unicode, for
example, may well need different classifications than studies of the
history of writing.

>Peter qua deviser of the classification is perfectly entitled to
>exclude products of sophisticated grammatogeny from his purview.
>And the rest of us are perfectly entitled to accept or ignore
>this stricture.
>
>

Can I quote you on that? :)

(Or will that force Peter to dip into his reserves of insults again?
Why are you looking to insult people anyway, Peter? That's not what
we're here for).

~mark